KPQI Presque Isle AFB (1942-1945)

[AVP]

AVP submitted a new resource:

KPQI Presque Isle AFB (1942-1945) - Retro of Presque Isle during WWII during its time ferrying aircraft to Europe

Situated very near the Canadian border, this airport in Maine played a major role in ferrying US aircraft to the United Kingdom during the Second World War, in conjunction with, among others, Montreal (CYUL), Goose Bay (CYYR), Gander (CYQX) in Newfoundland and Bluie West One (BGBW) in southern Greenland. Ernest K Gann operated from it in 1942 and it therefore features in his classic 'Fate is the Hunter'. By Ken Lawson, Uploaded by AVPView attachment 182995[ATTACH...

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[Sbob]

Presque Isle was where I started my college career back in the late 1970's.
By then it had become a regional airport with a small flight schedual.

They shifted over to fighter/interceptors and cruise missiles after WWII and I think the last AF planes to be based at PQI were either F-101's or F-106's. Either way, SAC had dropped a lot of its eggs on Loring AFB and Presque Isle quickly became redundant, like Dow AFB near Bangor.

Then story gets weird..
Loring kept its B-52's but lost its nuclear mission by the mid 1970s.
Why? Good luck finding an answer.
Maybe it was because Loring was the closest continental SAC base to Moscow?
This *kind of* makes sense if Loring was used as a bargaining chip.
Maybe there had been an "Oops" in the bomb depot and SAC decided to pull the plug on the weps but kept the 42nd BW active?
When Loring was being handed over for non-military use in the mid 1990's they did find a building that had been "entombed" due to long-lasting radiation contanination.
Either way, the biggest secret at Loring was that they DIDN'T have nukes on-base and the 42nd BW specialized in dropping conventional bombs.
This also held true for the 43rd Strat Wing on Guam and the 379th BW in Michigan.

 

[AVP]

Sbob, thanks for the comments. I had intended to do this airport many moons ago in the later 1950s era when the F-89s were present. This was at a time I was populating most of the Scorpion squadrons from Alaska to Iceland and everywhere in between with David Woosters AI model he kindly did for me and with Deltadarts repaints. I did get most of them done and released but for one reason or another, never got to Presque Isle. Ken Lawson decided recently to take it on in a WWII time frame and we planned that I might upgrade it to the 50s later on. Not sure that will happen, but who knows. The F-89 Scorpions were the last fighter types out of Presque Isle leaving in July of 1959 (75th and 76th squadrons) The 75th went to Dow AFB and converted to the F-101 while the 76th reformed at Keflavik.

I also did a version of Loring using Stinstrom's version backdating it to a 1955 - 62 version housing B-36s and the transition to the B-52 though I never released that one either. My research says they were fully Nuclear capable all the way to just before base closed in 1991 I think it was. By the 80s it was clear the Bombers caring nukes to the USSR would be a suicide mission and the role was taken over by the Ballistic Missiles and Sub launched. I think the 52s then switched to standoff missile type nukes before becoming conventional weapons carriers. Of course I am going from memery when I was researching it. I lived at Castle AFB from 62--66 as a kid and remember watching a lot of those birds' takeoff and land, up close as dad was an ATController stationed there. It left quite an impression on a young kid.

Again, thanks for the comments

 

[Sbob]

I was working on "basically" a Physics major at U Maine Presque Isle. My actual major was Electrical Engineering but UMPI didn't have the staff to teach the curriculum. I wound up doing "work study" jobs for my Physics Prof and Academic Advisor, mostly running the physics lab at UMPI although we did run a "school of the Air Force" (AKA Night School) classical physics program at Loring. My Lab was one of the briefing rooms just down the hallway from "the big room" with its one-way-mirror door and No Lone Zone signs.
Back in the day, I had issues installing John's Loring scenery. Partially because I was missing some scenery BGLs but mostly because bringing Loring back to life was just.. depressing. When Loring shut down it left a massive crater in northern Maine's economy.
Back in the good old days, my family and I would go to Loring's Open House days to see the Buffs and the (T-38) T-Birds show. There was a Master Sargent at Loring who was from St. Louis and he would put on a massive BBQ buffet. Every year my Mom would pester him for his BBQ recipe and every year he would smile and shake his head "No".

I mostly grew up under the 42nd BW. The "IP" for the Ashland bomb run (a large pulp and paper mill) was really close to my town, located between and just north of Mattawamkeag Lake and Pleasant Pond. Try the Ashland "Oil Burner" route or the later IR-800 route and you'll understand why that spot was used as the IP.

EVERY B-52 crew has to train for both Nuclear and Conventional drops. If the B-52 can carry it, the crews have to train for it.
By the early 1980's, the B-52 was mostly a cruise missile launch platform (once the ALCM went into service). Prior to that, the strategic B-52s carried a mix of SRAMs and free-fall nukes. I think it was a SRAM that fell in that building and contaminated it, but good luck finding out what really happened. For the most part, the SRAM was used as a "floor sweeper" with the warhead from the older Genie air-to-air missile. The SRAM could be programmed to make one course change after it was launched. In theory, if you had a squadron of Migs chasing you down, you could launch a SRAM and tell it to make a 180 degree course change to take them out.